Keith Hunter Jesperson

He was known as the "Happy Face Killer" for the smiley face he drew on many letters to the media and prosecutors. Keith is known to have killed eight women over the course of five years. His preferred method of killing was strangulation, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child. Many of his victims were prostitutes and people with no connection to him; however, his final victim was his long-time girlfriend. That connection is what led to his downfall. While Jesperson has claimed to have killed as many as 160 people, only eight murders have been confirmed. In the weeks following Taunja Bennett's murder, as all the attention was going to Pavlinac and Sosnovske, Jesperson wrote a confession on the bathroom wall of a truck stop and signed it with a smiley face. When that did not create the attention he desired, he wrote letters to media outlets and police departments confessing to his murders, starting with a six-page letter to The Oregonian in which he revealed the details of his killings. He signed each letter with a smiley face.